April 19, 2010

Essential life skill #3: folding a shirt and tie from a dollar bill. In terms of usefulness, I rank this right up there with the ability to parallel park. This is my first-ever money origami attempt, which was much more successful than the parallel parking section of my driving test, which I failed. Granted, nobody needs to parallel park in rural Minnesota where I grew up, so the incentive to learn was not great. A more useful skill is avoiding animals in your path, such as my math teacher's escaped pig which was loitering in the middle of the road one morning during my lesson. Mr. math teacher came to the door in his boxers when we knocked to tell him his hog had gotten out. But I digress.

You can fold yourself a drawerful of shirts by following an instructional video. I used this one and then referred to this one when I got stuck.

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comments:

would make a cute presentation of money for a gift - I'm sure most guys would rather the cash than the shirt anyway. :) our money is plastic and not foldable so i won't get to have that kind of fun - yeah no more paper money here in Aus.

I feel like a failure. Somehow I missed teaching you these essential life skills when you were younger. But I'm sure glad you're teaching them to me now before it's too late! (Too late for what, I don't know.)

I love these Essential life skill posts. I fold my money into frogs. Kaeru is Japanese for frog, and also Japanese for returning, so folding money into frogs means the money will come back to you.

It's also fun to make the frog jump around the table when the waitstaff at a restaurant is ignoring you. I also will shoot stars made from straw wrappers at my husband (though I'll have to learn to make him roses, since that's nicer). Another essential life skill for restaurant boredom: I can make a bunny hand puppet from a napkin.

That is amazing and great for a father's day gift idea. I loved the toilet paper one the other day...which I might have to surprise my weekend guest with but i am sure they would rather me surprise them with a money shirt...lol.

I love this as an "Essential Life Skill!" I used to have a book on money origami, maybe I should look around for it. I figured it would be funny to open my wallet and pay in shirts and rings! Great blog!

Rachel, fortunately living in Chicago has improved my parallel parking ability dramatically, so I'm okay now. Took me a sec to figure out what PP was. I first thought PowerPoint. Which I'm not very good at, either. :)

My dad taught us origami so we would be quiet during church. At restaurants, he used to fold his tips into little hearts or elephants. The waitresses loved it. The waiters didn't seem to care either way.

I'm a origami lover, any piece of paper that happens to fall in my hands become something, usually tsurus. But I've gotta tell you, this shirt is one of the most difficult origamis I've ever tried to fold! I've managed to fold two so far and I won't stop till they're looking perfect :D Thanks and I love your blog

I made this a few years ago for my oldest son. We have a running family joke that one year at Christmas I wrapped a shirt for him and on the gift tag wrote "TO: Matt From: Shirt instead of From: Mom. So I folded a $50 bill as a joke gift for him and wrapped it with a tag saying To: Matt From: Shirt. He loved it! But one thing he mentioned that he wishes I had used only a $1 bill so he could have kept it. He hated unfolding it.

Very essential tool. :) Thanks Clair for the written instructions with pictures. I was having a hard time following the video. lol i use origami to pass time during church and waiting for food at restraunts.

Dollar Bill Origami is a great way to make the TOOTH FAIRY even more awesome. My son was more excited about the origami than the money. Which was a great way to take the emphasis off "how much" he was or wasn't getting ;)

Wow! I love this so much!!! I made a shirt and pants and taped them together. then i added body parts made from sticky notes cut up. I Put it all on a card with a ten dollar bill to pop the origami man up when the card opens. It looks SO GOOD!

Haha! My uncle always asks for cash but my mom and I applaud ourselves for being awesome gift givers and find the idea of cash as a gift, impersonal. But since he insists, we can fold a bunch of these and put them inside a Macy's box, to tease him until he opens it, presenting them as the shirt he turned down for cash!

HI Jess! I was browsing for grad gift ideas on Pinterest and ran across this pin from your page! I feel almost like we got to catch up over coffee or something -- well, not QUITE like that -- but still really cool! Hope you're well!Jenny Fuller